As Chinese sci-fi enters the post-Liu Cixin generation（后刘慈欣时代） , Chinese sci-fi writers working in the 2010s and 2020s have engaged in more diverse sci-fi writing practices. Beginning with Chen Qiufan（陈楸帆）’s The Waste Tide（荒潮）, Mu Ming（慕明）’s The Serpentine Band（宛转环）, and then Shuangchimu（双翅目）’s The Cock Prince（公鸡王子）, this study will examine how Chinese sci-fi in the post-Liu Cixin generation imagines posthuman labour in the context of technological change, and what interactions labour has produced with the body and gender. It will also explore how the new labour, labourers, and labour relations created by Chinese sci-fi have changed the imagining of affective patterns and social structures in China.

Abstract:

In the context of contemporary China, humanism is mainly understood as an idea that emphasizes universal freedom and equality based on the individuality of humans. It held a very important position in Chinese social thought and ideology in the 1980s. However, the social movements and political reforms at the end of the 20th century led to a decline of humanism in mainstream Chinese politics, culture, and thought. The New Wave of Chinese science fiction since the 1990s, wrote largely outside the mainstream vision, takes on the remaining of humanist ideas in Chinese literature and culture from the 1980s. This paper analyzes how Zhang Ran’s science fiction novella When the Sun Falls responds to the challenges faced by humanism in the context of globalization in the 21st century on a level of cultural politics. It also discusses Chinese science fiction’s attempt draw on the solarpunk narrative to reconstruct humanistic ideals in a post-socialist context. When the Sun Falls can be considered the first solarpunk work in China. It explicitly evokes the real life political issues on a global scope. Particularly, it calls for environmental sustainability and social justice while proposing solarpunk solutions to related issues. It also highlights the universality of humanism through its presentation of the revolutionaries’ proactive and diverse struggles, reflecting the humanist ideals of freedom and equality. The many heroic figures with distinct humanistic characteristics that Zhang Ran creates in this work indicate an appetite for for activism. Faced with the gradual decline of humanistic ideals in the 21st century in the contemporary Chinese context of capitalist hegemony and technological despotism, conscious of the crises as well of the necessity of resistance, Zhang endeavours to reconstruct a possible future with humanistic values at its core with his radical imagination. Through a cultural-political interpretation of Zhang Ran’s work, this paper explores the profound uncertainty that characterizes the “future” in China within the complex realities of globalization. Furthermore, it indicates that a solarpunk reconstruction of humanism can offer indispensable insight to contemporary Chinese reality.

Donna Haraway defines cyborg in her A Cyborg Manifesto as an ideal figure that attempts to cross the boundaries between human and machines, human and animals, as well as human and other organic beings, possessing the potential to subvert established binary structures of gender, race, class, etc. This research focuses on the representation of cyborg and gender issues in multiple contemporary Chinese science fictions, by exploring three dimensions within cyborg narrative: cyborg body narration, the construction of emotion and feelings, and rethinking of posthumanism, which consistently revolves around the theme of “crossing boundaries”. This research examines whether these images of cyborg fit Donna Haraway's ideal cyborg imagination or not, and whether these cyborg representations offer new perspectives in the exploration of gender issues within Chinese science fiction. Through this analysis, this research further discusses how contemporary Chinese science fiction can create works that are able to escape from binary essentialism and embrace more possibilities regarding gender issues, by comparing the image of cyborg in both Chinese and Korean science fictions.

This paper examines the posthuman subject's technological considerations and their localized practices in Chinese science fiction literature, using Chen Qiufan（陈楸帆）'s science fiction collection "The Algorithms for Life" （人生算法）as the research text and integrating N. Katherine Hayles's theory of "cognitive assemblages." By analyzing the conflict between the discrete algorithmic logic and continuous embodied experience in "The Algorithms for Life," the study explores the dilemmas of posthuman subject in the digital age and reveals how they reconstruct the boundaries of subjectivity through human-machine cognitive collaboration.